Green With Indy Uses Art to Grow Composting

When I created Green With Indy, I created the tagline, “the circle of life of food”. My vision was of a company that facilitated all aspects of local food production, specifically as it relates to urban agriculture via the growth of kitchen and community gardens. The idea is to encourage residential vegetable gardening, especially for our youth and families in need, and to bring back the family dinner hour. Families eating together and communing around a dinner table in 2023... what a notion! But most important is the motivation and necessity to mitigate climate change and save our children’s future.

I have done the work proving that curbside compost collection can work in Indiana. Now is the time to use the wisdom gained from my experiences to fully develop the deeper meaning of Green With Indy. It’s also time to use all my talents to bring forward the full vision of Green With Indy.    

I am an artist. Specifically, I paint. Creativity birthed Green With Indy and now I would like art to help develop its full potential. Why art and its varied expressions? There has always been a connection between the environment and artists. Environmental artists often use natural materials such as leaves, flowers, and branches as the very basis of their artwork. These materials are also the foundation of composting.

Environmental artists often seek to both transform the way that a site is viewed and interacted with, while also revealing what was already there, and how it is used. That’s where art intersects with the environment. This challenges viewers to rethink how they "see" the world around them and pay more direct attention to the minute and distinct parts that make up what we may overlook. Moreover, in choosing to situate their work in specific ways and places, e.g., Indiana, the impact can be transformative. Permaculture landscaping is an aspect using native plants and habitats to save our soil and revitalize grow zones for humans and animals alike. By intersecting art and agriculture we can keep people engaged in what is produced visually and consumed. Crop art proves the example idea.

My paintings reflect the urban environment around us – the people and places we don’t always see, even when looking right at them. The mundane, the everyday, the overlooked. The lonely. The homeless. The hopeless. And, the flashes of hope, of dignity, of community.

I want to use my paintings to raise $1.5 million by 2025 so that GWI has established the foundation to transform the city’s composting ambitions to introduce curbside recycling, with compost pick-up available by subscription. So, through a series of art sales and events we will transform GWI into what it is meant to be.

I appreciate your support in fulfilling these objectives:

  • Establishing GWI as the dominant Indianapolis home-grown curbside compost collection service in the region to lay the foundation for the rebirth of victory gardens and urban agriculture.

  • Establishing a networked community of urban growers to share their bounty so that no one goes hungry.  

  • To keep people engaged in composting, gardening, and home cooking as a family by supporting urban agriculture via local artist expressions, utilizing various grow system methods and design.

  • To educate and engage people in reducing their carbon footprint via natural waste management in support of urban agriculture, while also helping to create a sustainable and livable world. Crucial to this is the use of art to keep us engaged while we all learn. 

Having said all of that, buy my art. Join me on this journey. It’s going to be wonderful.

Visit www.gpapi.art to see what I do when I am not collecting food waste for composting.

Thank you,

Greg F. Walton, a.k.a., GPapi.

We're Banning Bleached Paper Towels; Here's Why

Why We Are Banning Bleached Paper Towels From Compost

And, Why You Shouldn’t Use Bleached or Glossy Paper
in Your Compost or Worm Farm

This is article is attributed to Deep Green Permaculture and was published 11/09/2017 at www.deepgreenpermaculture.com.

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If you don’t feel up to the read, here’s a synopsis…

Chlorine bleach is caustic, kills helpful microbes in compost and increases the amount of Dioxins into our food system. Dioxins are highly toxic and can cause cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, damage to the immune system, and can interfere with hormones.” Also, catalogues and glossy magazines are often printed with toxic inks and dyes, unless it’s explicitly stated that they’re printed with environmentally safe inks, meaning plant based inks.

I think that says it all, don’t you?

If you are feeling wonky and want to know more, read on…

As gardeners, we often told that we shouldn’t use office photocopying paper or glossy magazines in our worm farms, compost or the garden in general. Many gardeners ask why not? There are very good reasons not to, which we’ll explore in this article!

By understanding a little about the different methods of paper production, we can better distinguish what should and shouldn’t go into our gardens.

Chlorine use in paper production

Most paper is made from wood, and in its natural state paper is actually BROWN in colour! You’ve all seen brown paper bags and cardboard boxes, well that’s the real colour of unbleached paper. To change paper from its natural brown colour to white, it needs to be bleached, and that’s where the problems begin…

There are many ways to bleach paper, some more environmentally friendly than others, but most bleached paper is treated with some form of chlorine-based bleach.

Why is chlorine used? Chlorine bleaches paper really white and also removes the woody compound called lignin from wood pulp, which causes the yellowing of paper when it’s exposed to sunlight, as happens with newspapers. (Incidentally, newspapers are chlorine-free and CAN go in your compost bins, worm farms and gardens).

When chlorine binds with carbon-based (organic) compounds such as lignins in wood pulp, it produces highly toxic dioxins and other toxic organochlorine byproducts, which wreak havoc in living systems.

What are dioxins and how toxic are they?

Dioxins are cause for great concern both to the environment and to all living organisms, no matter how we look at the subject. I’m quoting directly from sources here to remove any ambiguity of interpretation and to silence any naysayers who wish to play down the risks of dioxins in an attempt to cover up for the industry polluters. This section may be wordy, but for good reason.

According to the EXTOXNET Extension Toxicology Network (the Pesticide Information Project of Cooperative Extension Offices of Cornell University, Michigan State University, Oregon State University, and University of California at Davis):

“Dioxin is a generic name used to describe a family of compounds known as chlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins. The most notable, most studied, and most toxic chemical in this family is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, or 2,3,7,8-TCDD, most commonly referred to as TCDD. TCDD is colorless and odorless . Dioxins bioaccumulate in the food chain and the major route of human exposure is by eating fish, meat, and dairy products that have been exposed. Fetuses and nursing infants are at particular risk of exposure because of TCDDs accumulation in breast milk. Studies with laboratory animals have shown TCDD to be extremely toxic and the most potent carcinogen ever tested under laboratory conditions for some species of animals. However, the effects in humans exposed to TCDD have been more difficult to ascertain. Because of this, animal studies have been used as the basis of most risk assessments for dioxins.” [1]

The US EPA, despite their bad reputation for colluding with industry polluters and downplaying risks to human health to promote corporate interests and profits, is pretty clear about the danger when it states that “Dioxins are highly toxic and can cause cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, damage to the immune system, and can interfere with hormones.” [2]

Dioxins are classified as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), which means that they take a very long time to break down once they are in the environment, and in the meantime accumulate in living organisms, increasing their concentration, and therefore their toxicity, as they move up through the food chain. The persistence of dioxins and their capacity to bioaccumulate makes them insidious environmental poisons that remain active for decades. To directly quote the World Health Organisation (WHO) facts sheet – Dioxins and their effects on human health:

“Dioxins are environmental pollutants. They belong to the so-called “dirty dozen” – a group of dangerous chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Dioxins are of concern because of their highly toxic potential. Experiments have shown they affect a number of organs and systems.  Once dioxins enter the body, they last a long time because of their chemical stability and their ability to be absorbed by fat tissue, where they are then stored in the body. Their half-life in the body is estimated to be 7 to 11 years. In the environment, dioxins tend to accumulate in the food chain. The higher an animal is in the food chain, the higher the concentration of dioxins.” [3]

Despite these facts, it’s hard to imagine that some industry polluters still try to play down how toxic dioxins really are. Corporate ethics? We’re actually all quite familiar with the effects of dioxins on humans – remember the human suffering (cancers, birth defects, unusual ‘syndromes’ and diseases) caused by the use of the defoliant/herbicide Agent Orange uses in the Vietnam War? The infamous Agent Orange was a mixture of the herbicides 245-T and 24-D, which was contaminated with the manufacturing byproduct dioxin, specifically the most toxic of the dioxins, TCDD.

Research reported by Wolters Kluwer Health: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins in 2014 states that Vietnam War veterans exposure to Agent Orange and TCDD has been linked to a wide range of health problems, including many different cancers, but the association the two most common types of skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma) was previously unclear. Evidence now suggests veterans with prior exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange may be at higher risk for certain types of skin cancer even many years after exposure. [4]

Dioxins have far reaching harmful effects. Current research shows that the dioxins in Agent Orange sprayed during the Vietnam War (which occurred 50 years ago) are still causing health problems today. Previous research had established a link between exposure to dioxins through herbicides such as Agent Orange and prostate cancer in men, but new studies by researchers at Kanazawa University in Japan for the first time are showing the impact of dioxin exposure on women and babies. Exposure to dioxin in Agent Orange released during the Vietnam War has been linked to increased levels of the hormone DHEA in women and their breastfeeding children decades later.

The US military’s use of Agent Orange in Vietnam for jungle defoliation and chemical leaks from their storage facilities have created hotspots of dioxin contamination in that country, with levels two to five times higher than in non-contaminated regions, resulting in high dioxin levels of in the soil and air. which are absorbed into people’s bodies through the food they eat and the air they breathe. Research has shown a nearly three-fold increase in the hormone DHEA in babies from dioxin hotspots compared to non-contaminated regions, which was caused by dioxins being transferred to the baby from mother’s umbilical blood and breast milk.

To comprehend the significance of this, we need to understand that the hormone DHEA (Dehydroepiandrosterone) is responsible for male and female characteristics in humans, and that dioxins are endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) which interfere with how hormones send messages to each other around the body. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals have been implicated in causing birth defects, cancer and neurodevelopment disorders. Dioxins interfere with DHEA, the hormone responsible for determining male and female characteristics in humans, putting hormonal systems out of balance, leading to health problems and disfigurement. [5]

It’s no surprise that we have the United Nations ‘Stockholm Convention’, an international agreement to reduce emissions of certain persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including dioxins. So yes, dioxins are bad, very, very bad…

Luckily, there is some sanity and reason in the western world, or maybe the problem is far too big to ‘sweep under the rug’, and attempts have been made to reduce the paper manufacturing industry’s dioxin environmental pollution.

Chlorine-free paper

Up until the late 1990s, bleaching paper pulp with chlorine gas (elemental chlorine) was the preferred method, producing significant amounts of dioxin pollution. This method has been mostly phased out in preference for less polluting industrial processes that cause less environmental damage. But does that make paper chlorine-free, or more importantly, dioxin-free?

The key to determining how environmentally safe your paper is, is by understanding the labelling codes.

If paper is “chlorine-free”, it’s labelled according to the following categories:

  • TCF “totally chlorine-free” is either unbleached or bleached without any type of chlorine, using safer alternatives such as oxygen, ozone, or hydrogen peroxide instead.

  • PCF “processed chlorine-free” is recycled paper that may have once been bleached with chlorine, but as part of the recycling process, has only been bleached with alternatives such as oxygen, ozone, or hydrogen peroxide.

  • ECF “elemental chlorine-free” is bleached with a chlorine derivative such as chlorine dioxide (ClO2), but without elemental chlorine (Cl).

It’s important to point out that:

  • Elemental chlorine-free (ECF) paper which is bleached using chlorine derivatives such as chlorine dioxide may be less harmful to the environment than elemental chlorine, but this process still produce some dioxins and other toxic organochlorine byproducts, which is why we don’t use glossy paper and office paper in our gardens.

  • Most paper product are made from bleached wood/tree based paper, and only a very small proportion of the market is chlorine free

  • Only a small minority of paper product are made from non-tree based paper, and these are usually chlorine free.

And the rest…

Paper as a medium is fairly pointless without something written or drawn on it, be it pictures or writing. Most newspapers are printed with vegetable based inks, but that’s not the case with glossy magazines and office photocopies and laser prints.

Catalogues and glossy magazines are often printed with toxic inks and dyes, unless it’s explicitly stated that they’re printed with environmentally safe inks.  They may also use toxic heavy-metal based inks to produce vivid colours, though safer substitutes have been developed for most of these, traces of heavy metals and other toxic metals may still be present.

Photocopies and laser prints use toner, which is a mixture of iron oxide and a polymer (plastic) such as a styrene acrylate copolymer, a polyester resin, a styrene butadiene copolymer or similar compound, which is fused to the paper by heat. Plastics which aren’t food-safe don’t belong in your garden!

Keeping it safe

If you’re growing your own food, you don’t want it contaminated with all manner of poisons and pollutants like that produced by chemical-based (non-organic agriculture) which is sold in supermarkets! Newspaper & unprinted cardboard can go in the garden, but no office photocopy paper and no glossy printed pages. Also, go easy on the corrugated cardboard, the glue contain boron, and even though boron is an important trace element in the soil, too much of it is toxic to plants.

For your reference, I have also written articles which list what you can put in your compost and what you can put in your worm farm.

Remember, if it goes into your garden, it ends up in your body, so when growing uour own food – keep it safe, keep it healthy, and happy gardening!


Take a Little Off the Top, Part II

Redux, Reduce, Reuse…Take a Little Off the Top, Part II

In our last episode, we see the intrepid, super hero, meaning you, yearning to create new dishes, birthed out of what shall be named, “scraps” or “leftovers”, when nothing could be further from the truth. Remember, reducing the amount of food wasted requires a little pre-planning and thought given to how you can extend a particular dish. If done right, you might be able to resurrect the extraordinary from the ordinary and save money to boot. Here’s an example of what I mean. Old bananas can be frozen to make banana bread. The bananas weren’t wasted and the money wasn’t either.

Here are a few more ideas…

  1. Got wilted carrots, zucchini or parsnips? Why pay for someone else’s baking skills? Create an easy-to-bake bread, muffin or pancake with them. Remember the banana bread idea? Now think smoothie! Or, you might consider making a cold soup with a touch of your favorite cheese. Speaking of cheese…

  2. Add the rind of Parmigiana Reggiano to bolster the flavor of soups.

  3. Retain the seeds, pits, and cuttings of your veggies and regrow them at home – saving you money on seeds or seedlings. This puts us on the trail to square foot or window sill gardening. Stay tuned for how to build an inexpensive indoor grow system.

  4. Save veggie peels for all-natural fabric dye. What about using the dye to make your own water-based paint or add to your homemade paper hobby? Use beet ends for reds and purples, red cabbage for blues, yellow onions for oranges, and spinach for greens. Have a look around Pinterest for inspiration!

  5. Keep the green “trunks” of your broccoli. They make for a delicious soup. Just search “broccoli stalk soup” for inspiration.

  6. Hold onto tomato peels, cores and juice and turn into a tomato sauce. Just blend and simmer with oils and spices of your choice.

  7. Reserve kale stalks for soups that call for chopped greens.

Remember, the added bonus to this is the amount of money that you will save while reducing the amount you waste.

That’s for now.

Be the super hero. Reduce, Repurpose, Save $$, and Compost!

Be the super hero. Reduce, Repurpose, Save $$, and Compost!


Take a Little Off the Top

Take a Little Off the Top

Most of the food waste we see are trimmings. These flavor and nutrient- filled scraps boost and add complex character to many dishes. Those carrot peels, potato skins, portions of herbs, that usually are thrown out, can take an ordinary dish to new heights, creating comfort food memories and increasingly better health.

Here’s an example…Do you use fresh herbs?

I, like many of us, grew up shaking dried herbs and seasonings from a bottle. Even today, there are more dried versions of herbs in most grocers than there are fresh. But, here’s the rub. Producing those bottles comes with an cost. Commercially grown herbs come from afar: distant fields or factories. Bottles have to be produced, transported and stocked at your local grocer and those noisome plastic sprinkle caps can’t be recycled. And, most importantly, fresh herbs, vs dried, in my opinion,…fresh wins, hands down.

But, fresh herbs purchased at your local store are a chronic and high level waste producer. Why? They mostly are not portioned to fit your needs. And, because they're sold in large bunches, the disconnect is that most recipes only call for a tablespoon or two. Some, like oregano and rosemary, dry well, but many do not. So, whadda ya do? Work with what you’ve got. GYO-Grow Your Own in windowsill boxes, jars, buckets, cans…you name it. If you can’t GYO and your only option is your local grocer, buy only what you’ll eat. And if those options don’t suit you, freeze some for long-term use.

So what to do when you have too much of a good thing?

Blend them, mince them, chop them, freeze them, dry them. There’s a host of options where you finely grind dried herbs with a pestle and mortar by hand, and then blend or stir in enough oil to coat them. Pack into airtight bags, with the oil to protect them and voila, they'll keep their peak, fresh flavors for months. Add these when ready to flavor water with bones and celery tops, then you are off to making your own homemade stock or broth.

Also by DIY, you control the amount of salt in your diet. Commercially processed broths could be mined for the amount of salt they contain. Do this and you are on the road to better health. In a couple of hours, you can make a batch of broth that’s potentially organic and could possibly extend your life. By controlling your salt intake you are less likely to have high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, osteoporosis, stomach cancer, kidney disease, renal stones or conditions related to obesity. It may take a while to accumulate enough scraps, so freeze what you have until you have enough. Then compost the scraps. That’s why we are here.

Here are a few examples:

  1. One of the best ways to reduce food waste is to take a long, hard look at the things you trim off and discard. Broccoli stems, for example, make up a big part of the head and they're just as good as the florets once you've removed the stringy skin. Washing your potatoes, carrots and apples instead of peeling them, preserves much of their nutrition. Corn husks can be used to wrap tamales or fish for steaming, where they'll add flavor. The leafy portions of celery and carrots can be used as herbs to flavor your soups and salads, or as a tasty garnish on finished dishes. A bit of internet searching will turn up LOTS of additional suggestions.

  2. Leek tops – Throwing away the leafy green tops is a missed opportunity to enjoy culinary scrumptiousness. Chop them into bite sized pieces, stir fry them, add to soups, make a frittata or quiche. See the three websites/apps in your reading list and add their link in the blog. Add and index

  3. Again, notice what professional chefs do. Remember stuffed potato skins? Is that still a thing? Well, make your own or make chips out of them.

  4. Drink fermented pickle brine or sauerkraut juice, straight, no chaser for your gut’s health. Use it in soups or thin and flavor bland foods like hummus. You can liven up homemade salad dressings as well. It’s also excellent for brining meats or poultry for barbequing. But, remember to adjust the amount of salt you add overall to your culinary creation. Also…

  5. Use the brine to pickle watermelon rinds. Just peel the rind skin and stuff them in a jar. Add salt, water, spices or herbs to pickle rinds. Or, use the brine to pickle lemon peel, red onion slices — you name it. Experiment and brine anything you think will work. Just stuff them in the jarred brine or your homemade version.

This is about creating new habits to reduce food waste. But, every new habit needs a reward to be successful, so here’s a suggestion: total the amount you save in cash each week and invest that in…let’s say…Bitcoin?

Now you are on the road to self-sufficiency. Your grandparents knew about this stuff. Old school is too cool! And, always compost what’s left.

Great!…Right?

More to come next week.

Best Practices: Take a long, hard look at the things you trim off and discard. Create soups, frittatas or easy- bake breads and cakes. imagine the possibilities.

Best Practices: Take a long, hard look at the things you trim off and discard. Create soups, frittatas or easy- bake breads and cakes. imagine the possibilities.


Click to place an order.

Click to place an order.


It’s our mission. Make it Yours…Subscribe.

It’s our mission. Make it Yours…Subscribe.

Grow Your Own Food for Health, Wealth and Fun!

Grow Your Own-GYO

There are an estimated 50,000 edible plants grown throughout the world, many within our growing zone, which is 6a. Our zone is determined by the USDA in their Plant Hardiness Zone Map and the variety of plants it’s capable of supporting are mostly unknown to us; our American diet relies primarily on corn, soybeans, wheat, barley and oats. Notice that four of the five listed are grasses. 

So, what are we missing out on? Flavor, variety, an appreciation of food, cultural influences and differences that expand and add richness to our lives. We also miss out on the communal relationships that revolve around food preparation and consumption. I’ll save my rant about what outsourcing food preparation has done to our culture for another day, but as we emerge from a year of sheltering in place, there’s an opportunity to manage our own diet, rather than handing over control of what we eat to commercial food processors. In short, they really don’t give a damn about you and me. But we at Green With Indy do.

So, in this edition about reducing food waste, we will begin with what’s right in front of us -- how to grow what we like, in the quantities that we need. 

Starting with easy stuff, we’re compiling a list of of foods you can regrow from scraps e.g., basil, bok choy, cabbage, carrot greens, celery, etc. You can even grow your own avocado producing tree indoors, in Indianapolis, if you’re willing to wait a few years. From this point you‘ll learn to take control of your food, health and money. 

Note: We won’t recreate the wheel, so we’re listing sites that we like to help with the process. So here you go:

See: https://foodrevolution.org/blog/reduce-food-waste-regrow-from-scraps/

Share easy, practical tips for using food scraps before you give them to Green With Indy Food Waste Composting Service. Shameless plug…we know;)

That’s it for now. 

Fin
Coming next: Creative Ways to Use Food Scraps

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TIPS TO REDUCING FOOD WASTE

A WEEKLY GUIDE OF TIPS TO REDUCING FOOD WASTE

REDUCE, REUSE AND SAVE MONEY! 

Every day at GWI, we see food waste. We see good food and bad, and all types of compostable waste. But food waste predominates all of the other types of waste we capture. Everyone, without exception, creates food waste. Every food preparation scrap or uneaten bite is waste. Every mold covered dish hiding in the back of the refrigerator…all of it is wasted food. Our ability to compost it and grow more of it defines sustainability. But even so, and as good as that is, shouldn’t we do what we can to reduce it?  

So, here’s what Green With Indy is going to do:
Every week we will publish tips on how to reduce the amount of food waste created and share our perspective on what we eat, and why and how it impacts our earth. Hopefully, you will enjoy what’s offered and share, share, share. And when in doubt, share again.

So, let’s begin with some basic benefits to reducing food waste:

It saves you money by buying less food and having less to compost.

  • Monitoring your food waste directly relates to your pocketbook. If you were a commercial kitchen, this would be called an audit. This is where evaluating your waste and assigning a $ value to it, will quickly identify how much money you are throwing away daily or weekly.

It keeps food out of landfills and reduces methane emissions. This lowers your carbon (fossil fuel) footprint. It’s the soot that oil leaves behind. Soot is not compostable.

  • The earth is blazin’, freakin’ hot and food rotting in a landfill adds methane gas, which conducts and holds more heat than carbon monoxide. Hands down, it’s the single, most important reason to reduce waste or compost what’s wasted. So, less food rotting in a landfill means less gas heating up the atmosphere. In a nutshell, life on the planet continues. A basic, right? Also, you can’t grow food in a landfill. Also relevant.

  • It conserves energy and resources. Waste-related pollution involved in the growing, manufacturing, transporting, and selling of food (not to mention hauling the food waste and then landfilling it) decreases. Conversely, increasing the number of small, locally-owned organic family farms reduces our vulnerability to corporate food systems.

  • It supports your community by providing donated untouched food that would have otherwise gone to waste and shows that we care for each other.

  • Compost through #greenwithindy. It is the last thing to do that reduces food waste. Nothing better defines sustainability…it’s the circle of life of food.

To learn more, subscribe for curbside food waste compost collection: www.greenwithindy.com/product-page

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